Pre-ordering Call of Duty: Black Ops III grants players access to the game's multiplayer beta, the franchise's first since 2008's World at War. After all, does a game as ridiculously popular as CoD really need such a wide-open beta (considering that every pre-order is given two extra beta codes to give to their buddies)? Even so, it's always fun to see how the next CoD game is shaping up, and though Black Ops III doesn't seem to be a mold-breaker for the series, it retains the same fiendishly addictive twitch shooter gameplay that has kept the franchise so absurdly popular over the years, while introducing a number of welcome refinements. For one, the divisive (but awesome) exo-suits from Advanced Warfare are gone in favour of some simple jet thrusters, returning the game to the more grounded type of combat from previous games, while still allowing a certain degree of verticality. Activision's gameplay footage released so far can tell us so much, yet there's nothing quite like getting your hands on the game for yourself, and so, here are 12 things we learned from playing the Black Ops III beta...